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Should this be illegal?

Should this be ILLEGAL?

  • Total voters
    12
  • Poll closed .
OrphanSlug said:
Now you are adding in new subjects here to cloud the issue.

Read what I said again, you are still wanting to hold banks to a standard all the while ignoring that other players in Oil trading can do. And you add in verbiage on banks being against labor in our nation. No matter if that is or is not true, you still have not addressed that there is plenty of commodity price manipulation going on but you want the focus to be on one potential player. That is a huge problem, all because as a "conservative" you suggest what the business model should be for social benefit.

On top of all that you seem to be wanting to talk about corporate crime, bringing up fines associated with the financial collapse of 2008. One, that does not involve oil manipulation. Two, JPMorgan is not unique in paying these fines. And lastly, the government went to many of these institutions in a panic to save other dying institutions only to turn around a few years later and extort fines from these same institutions run by people who were not in charge during the questionable practices bringing about these fines. JPMorgan being built on many things, including oil, does not mean that any manipulation that might have occurred means something to the fines they are paying.

Then to cap it off the Citizens United ruling, which has nothing to do with bank oil price manipulation, suggests nothing but continued attempts ignore the issue you opened the thread on.
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I was tying the asset manipulation to historical manipulation by the same agencies/Corporations that were involved in the 1920's fiasco. What is good for Corporate is usually bad for humans. Pretty simple really. Congressional investigation has already confirmed the asset manipulation, but I don't think they will do anything about it because of the nature of the Corporate/Labor War being won by Corporate. I don't think this jsut happened in the last few years, it's just more blatant.
 
OrphanSlug said:
Now you are adding in new subjects here to cloud the issue.

Read what I said again, you are still wanting to hold banks to a standard all the while ignoring that other players in Oil trading can do. And you add in verbiage on banks being against labor in our nation. No matter if that is or is not true, you still have not addressed that there is plenty of commodity price manipulation going on but you want the focus to be on one potential player. That is a huge problem, all because as a "conservative" you suggest what the business model should be for social benefit.

On top of all that you seem to be wanting to talk about corporate crime, bringing up fines associated with the financial collapse of 2008. One, that does not involve oil manipulation. Two, JPMorgan is not unique in paying these fines. And lastly, the government went to many of these institutions in a panic to save other dying institutions only to turn around a few years later and extort fines from these same institutions run by people who were not in charge during the questionable practices bringing about these fines. JPMorgan being built on many things, including oil, does not mean that any manipulation that might have occurred means something to the fines they are paying.

Then to cap it off the Citizens United ruling, which has nothing to do with bank oil price manipulation, suggests nothing but continued attempts ignore the issue you opened the thread on.
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Here is the Senate report.

Senate Report: Scale of Wall Street Holdings Are

"Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, released an alarming 396-page report that details how Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks have quietly, and often stealthily through shell companies, gained ownership of a stunning amount of the nation’s critical industrial commodities like oil, aluminum, copper, natural gas, and even uranium. The report said the scale of these bank holdings “appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history.”
snip
"Morgan Stanley held “operating leases on over 100 oil storage tank field with 58 million barrels of storage capacity globally and 18 natural gas storage facilities in US and Europe.” Morgan Stanley also had “over 100 ships under time charters or voyages for movement of oil product, and was ranked 9th globally in shipping oil distillates in 2009.” The company also owned 6 domestic and international power plants.

JPMorgan had a “significant global oil storage portfolio (25 [million barrel] capacity) … along with 19 Natural Gas storage facilities on lease.” It also reported that JPMorgan had acquired “Henry ath metals warehouse (LME certified base metals warehousing/storage worldwide),” and that JPMorgan’s “total base metal inventory was as high as $8 [billion]” during the first quarter of 2012.

Bank of America had “23 oil storage facilities and 54 natural gas facilities…leased for storage.”

Goldman Sachs had four tolling agreements and a wholly-owned subsidiary, Cogentrix, with ownership interests in over 30 power plants; owned “Metro Warehouse which controls 84 metal warehouse/storage facilities globally” and qualified as a London Metals Exchange storage provider; had acquired a Colombian coal mine valued at $204 million, which had also included associated rail transportation for the coal. The report also found that Goldman Sachs had conducted “a uranium trading business that engages in the trading of the underlying commodity.”
 
lifeisshort said:
I don't think a bank should own anything except the bank.
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Banks need to invest money somehow and should be able to own commodities, stocks, etc. but never controlling interests.
 
jet57 said:
Well, you conservatives like the deregulated free market don't you? That's what you get with one.
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But didn't this happen with Obama et. al?

Anyone see what bills deregulated this, or is this speculation?
 
The SEC is tasked with policing this sort of thing. Of course they are controlled largely by the POTUS.
 
I don't think it matters much who owns the commodity. It's a bank, or an oil company or an investment firm or a wealthy Saudi family. So what?
 
Lord of Planar said:
But didn't this happen with Obama et. al?

Anyone see what bills deregulated this, or is this speculation?
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It doesn't matter who signed what. The corps call it "vertical integration"; otherwise known as pyramiding or monopolies. Control goes to the one with all the control and that's what you get when you allow the deregulatd free market to run things.
 
jet57 said:
It doesn't matter who signed what. The corps call it "vertical integration"; otherwise known as pyramiding or monopolies. Control goes to the one with all the control and that's what you get when you allow the deregulatd free market to run things.
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I was making a counterpoint to your blame game.
 
Anti-trust laws already outlaw collective price fixing in the USA.

What is totally unethnical and illegal in the USA is what the Russian government is doing in regards to energy. Seizing private companies, supply manipulation and collective price fixing.
 
DaveFagan said:
Here is the Senate report.

Senate Report: Scale of Wall Street Holdings Are

"Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin, released an alarming 396-page report that details how Wall Street’s too-big-to-fail banks have quietly, and often stealthily through shell companies, gained ownership of a stunning amount of the nation’s critical industrial commodities like oil, aluminum, copper, natural gas, and even uranium. The report said the scale of these bank holdings “appears to be unprecedented in U.S. history.”
snip
"Morgan Stanley held “operating leases on over 100 oil storage tank field with 58 million barrels of storage capacity globally and 18 natural gas storage facilities in US and Europe.” Morgan Stanley also had “over 100 ships under time charters or voyages for movement of oil product, and was ranked 9th globally in shipping oil distillates in 2009.” The company also owned 6 domestic and international power plants.

JPMorgan had a “significant global oil storage portfolio (25 [million barrel] capacity) … along with 19 Natural Gas storage facilities on lease.” It also reported that JPMorgan had acquired “Henry ath metals warehouse (LME certified base metals warehousing/storage worldwide),” and that JPMorgan’s “total base metal inventory was as high as $8 [billion]” during the first quarter of 2012.

Bank of America had “23 oil storage facilities and 54 natural gas facilities…leased for storage.”

Goldman Sachs had four tolling agreements and a wholly-owned subsidiary, Cogentrix, with ownership interests in over 30 power plants; owned “Metro Warehouse which controls 84 metal warehouse/storage facilities globally” and qualified as a London Metals Exchange storage provider; had acquired a Colombian coal mine valued at $204 million, which had also included associated rail transportation for the coal. The report also found that Goldman Sachs had conducted “a uranium trading business that engages in the trading of the underlying commodity.”
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The part you did not quote...

Go with... "issuing a single, comprehensive limit on bank holding companies’ exposure to physical commodities”; “narrowing the scope of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley authorities that allowed the explosion of Wall Street involvement in these activities to begin with”; and “instituting new safeguards to prevent Wall Street banks from using commercially valuable, nonpublic information obtained from their physical commodity activities to manipulate markets or gain unfair trading advantages."

The results will not be what you think they will, just as the results of other regulation end up with consequence. And no where in the report best I can tell is the statement "The banks are already manipulating commodity price" or "Our findings constitute legal action against or new criminal investigation of banks."
 
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